DES MOINES, IOWA (July 18, 2022) — The IowaWORKS.gov website that was recently impacted by a website outage has been restored, Iowa Workforce Development announced. The outage, caused by a cyberattack on third-party vendor Geographic Solutions Inc (GSI), was resolved after close coordination between GSI and the state.
Iowans can utilize the IowaWORKS.gov website to search for a new job and record their work search activities. The delivery of unemployment benefit payments was not impacted by the outage, but the need for unemployment claimants to report re-employment activities on IowaWORKS.gov was temporarily suspended. As a result of the website being restored:
- Individuals filing weekly claims will again be required to report reemployment activities on IowaWORKS.gov beginning on Sunday, July 24 (to report activities for the week prior)
- Individuals who filed an initial claim from Sunday, June 26, through Friday, July 15, 2022, are asked to log into the IowaWORKS.gov website and ensure they have an active résumé that is viewable to employers.
To fully restore the website, a thorough operations and cybersecurity process took place to safeguard the site and its data. GSI has publicly stated that no sensitive customer or end-user information was affected, and the same conclusion was affirmed by the state.
The state has continued to review the circumstances around the outage and ensure that continuity plans continue to remain updated. Due to operational security concerns, as a matter of policy the State of Iowa does not publicize or discuss cybersecurity tactics or strategies.
Unemployment claimants with questions about their claims should contact the IWD customer service line at uiclaimshelp@iwd.iowa.gov or 1-866-239-0843. A call-back option is also available.
